solesoffire:

literature meme | characters 1/7

Marya Morevna was just a young girl in St. Petersburg when a bird outside her window fell from a tree, turned into a soldier of the Tsar, and married her oldest sister. That was her first glimpse of the magic of Russia, but by the time her third sister had been married off to a third bird-turned-soldier, “the face of the world had changed,” and the magic with it: the soldier-bird was in the Red Army, and the eleven other families who lived communally in her great house had all brought their house spirits (a whole committee of domoviye!) with them. And still she hoped for a bird to come and marry her, but she also grew tired of watching—so when Koschei the Deathless, the Tsar of Life himself came to marry her, she never saw what other form he took. Marya Morevna transformed from a clever child of the revolution, to Koschei’s beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing.

(via jaimelannister)